Migration, Mobility, Movement: New Horizons of the Possible

Anne McNevin, Institute for the Study of International Development Speaker Series

7 September, 2017

A common set of assumptions shape contemporary debates about borders and migration. Some of these assumptions are long-standing and indicative of deeply entrenched social, political and cultural norms; others have emerged more recently but have become firmly lodged in governmental logics, policy settings, and popular imaginations. These assumptions provide the starting points for analysis and proposition, determining what needs to be established to make a credible case and what can be taken as given. What is taken as given are particular relations between mobility, immobility and membership that have come to seem so obvious that they hardly seem worth mentioning – and yet these relations are not as stable as they seem. In this talk, I examine how this givenness plays out across a spectrum of debate from restrictive to progressive perspectives. Pointing to some of the gaps, contradictions and oversights at stake, I also reflect on critical resources available to enliven new horizons of the possible.